This week I'm...

What a weekend! Toile and Trouble came round for dinner on Friday night so I cooked up some Indian food - saag paneer, ginger & garlic potatoes, and spicy onions with poppadoms.  We had a fun night and I also got some very valuable help and advice with my dress toile (see yesterday's blog post for more on that).  I don't think I mentioned my crazy Saturday in my last post? I watched films all day (i.e. procrastinated over sewing but had a very good time whilst doing so) and by about 4pm decided I'd do some sewing.  As my downstairs neighbours were having a party I knew the noise of the machine wouldn't disturb them, and I doubt I'd have been able to sleep anyway, so I stayed up sewing till 2am and got my dress toile finished!  I didn't leave the house all day and I loved it! On Sunday I watched Vertigo for the first time (I loved it) then ironed my toile and cut out a practice run for my pencil skirt pattern before making a lovely spicy chickpea and spinach stew for dinner.  It felt like such a luxury not to go anywhere or have anything I needed to do, except what I wanted to do creatively! Does anyone else get those weekends where they know they just have to stay home and have some downtime?

Spicy chickpea & spinach stew

Making - I have archive-related stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday night after work, and a work leaving do on Thursday after work so I doubt I'll be making much! Though I am going to try and get a bit done on the toile for my self-drafted pencil skirt

Reading - I was so excited to receive Lindsay Anderson: Cinema Authorship in the post on Friday afternoon so I'll be reading that in my spare time this week as I haven't read any of the chapters in almost two years! The book was one of the outcomes of a three-year AHRC-funded project I worked on at Stirling University.  My job was to catalogue the film-related papers in the Lindsay Anderson Collection and carry out research.  It was such a proud moment to get this through and see all our work in this published form - though I'm still not sure my contribution merits a front-page credit!

Listening - I've been enjoying revisiting lots of Boards of Canada recently and last night spent some time listening to John Fahey for the first time in ages - bliss!
Watching - no time for TV this week probably - and seeing how much I watched over the weekend that's probably a good thing! 
Planning - too much! I have 3 versions of the self-drafted pencil skirt in my head, 2 Banksia's, and of course still the dress to make for the wedding mid-November.

I wish I'd taken part in the Banksia sew-along but getting on with the dress had to take priority when I've got a deadline of mid-November. I'm still planning to work on the Banksia's but the dress, and some pencil skirts for work, are more essential right now - if a dress for a wedding can be considered 'essential'.  Did anyone else take part in the Banksia sew-along? I'm so looking forward to seeing everyone's creations!

My first toile!

With the help of Toile and Trouble I'm making a dress for a wedding I'm going to mid-November.   Away back in July 2011 I asked for some advice here on whether to use McCalls or Simplicity Lisette for my next sewing plans.  I was so happy when both Tilly and Shivani responded - with the same advice, start with the McCalls.  Well the dress never quite happened - until now!

The fabric I used for the toile is an old grey duvet cover.   It's actually a really nice fabric so if I can sort out a few wee mistakes I've made, particularly with the way I've sewn up the top of the zip and facings, then I think I could actually get wear out of this.  After some much-needed advice, and help with the pinning, I managed to install my first invisible zipper - yay! It's far from perfect but it'll do and I'm pleased with my first attempt.  The dress fits pretty well round the hips but it's definitely a bit large on the waist and at the back so, with some more help from Toile and Trouble, I'm sure we can get the pattern altered slightly to make it a bit more fitted.  I thought the sleeves looked like they'd be huge but they actually fit pretty well.  I feel like I'm learning so much all the time now with my sewing - both with help from an IRL friend and help from blogging friends and it's so exciting to see projects come together like this.  I can't wait to get started on the real fabric now - after some pattern tweaking of course!

Not so 'invisible' invisible zip

Vintage Vision

On my most recent trip to Abergavenny I stumbled across a lovely vintage store Vintage Vision which is handily situated just down the street from my brother's restaurant Pizzorante.

I was very restrained (there were a lot of gorgeous clothes in there!) and, almost, didn't buy anything. However when I saw this pattern I practically squealed with delight and couldn't leave without it.  This pattern is so similar in style to one of my favourite dresses - a stripy sun-dress I bought in Iguana Vintage Clothing in Los Angeles.  When I bought the dress it had stripes in the v-neck like the yellow version on the left. Not just one stripe like shown but three, and in a luminous pink fabric that I really wasn't sure about.  Apart from the stripes I loved it so I bought it and quickly cut the stripes off.  There's no zip on my dress, just some thin elastic at the waist and some buttons on the shoulders which I never need to undo to get it on and off, so I know I could make it again without the zip (another bonus!).

I get so much use out of the dress I have that I'm looking forward to making another one up and I particularly like the blue stripy version with the contrasting stripes on the shoulders. 

Minus the pink stripes

Wearing my LA dress for a friend's wedding

Late to the party but at least I passed the finish line

Well, my first sew-along and I finished on time - yay! thought it would have helped if I'd remembered to put up this post last night for the pyjama party - doh! As a complete beginner to sewing I found the pace of the sew-along a real help as it stopped me doing my usual and rushing ahead without reading patterns. I think I could do with shortening the elastic a bit more to make them tighter, though whether I get round to doing this is another matter, I'm just happy to have a pair of PJ bottoms I can wear- yay! So a big thank you Karen, for restoring my confidence in my ability to learn to sew. I think more sew-alongs are the way forward!

As to what I'm reading, ok I know it's after 7am so I've missed the give-away but I'll add this in anyway. I'm reading a novel by Winifred Holtby South Riding.  It was first published in 1936, after Holtby's death at the age of just 37.  The book tells the story of a fictional community in Yorkshire, South Riding, in the 1930s and the reason I picked it up in the library is it tells of a young idealistic headmistress and her fight to improve education for girls.  This ties in with my current archivist post - cataloguing the records of a teaching union, the National Union of Women Teachers, who along with fighting for equal pay for women teachers also fought for equal educational opportunities for girls.  It may sound a bit dry but it's written in a really easy to read style and gives a very colourful depiction of life in the 1930s.

Trying to check if the hems are equal. Doesn't look it but I think they are, must be my legs that are squint heh heh!

Peaches and green

I finished my second Sorbetto top last weekend but never got round to taking a photo of me wearing it until this weekend.  I'd like to say it was due to an unusually busy week but it seems like every week is busy and time just going faster and faster. On Thursday morning I had a wee freak out when getting ready for work as it seemed like only a minute ago it had been Wednesday morning getting ready for work - I really felt like I was in Groundhog day for a moment!

Anyway, this weekend was a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of London life, I went to stay with my brother and his girlfriend in Abergavenny.  Me and my brother went to Brecon yesterday for the Brecon jazz festival so I asked him to take my photo outside Brecon Cathedral - the venue for the concert we went to.  I love my second Sorbetto as much as my first one! The fabric is gorgeous - a Liberty print I picked up on Goldhawk Road and I underlined it with a lovely soft white cotton just to make sure it wasn't see-through.  I know I'll get lots of wear out of it as it goes with so many colours - peach and green being a favourite!

The Brecon Jazz Festival was great fun - there was music going on everywhere you turned - in pubs, outside the Cathedral, in make-shift tents set up for the weekend.  We went to see the Tim Kliphuis Quintet featuring Dave Newton - a band made up of members from Holland, Scotland, England and Malta.  They played a great mixture of jazz, folk, classical and North African music with a violin, double bass, guitar, piano and a fantastic percussionist who played lots of instruments, including some really unusual ones, like a large vase!  The venue was stunning and Brecon itself was lovely.  We got some freshly made still-warm welsh cakes which and my brother got a gorgeous cider Happy Daze, which unfortunately as I was driving I could only have a sip of.


I don't know if I've mentioned it before but my brother and his girlfriend moved to Wales to open an Italian restaurant in Abergavenny and to say I'm proud and excited about it would be a huge understatement!  I know you could say I'm slightly bias but my brother is an amazing chef and his friend who he's going into business with is a specialist pizza chef from Italy - ooh, I cannae wait!

So.. what next for the Sorbetto?!  I just spotted the PDF for a sleeve pattern for the Sorbetto over at Sew, incidentally.  I don't have much of a fabric stash though and I'm pretty skint this month so I'll need to start scouring the charity shops to see what I can find.

Officially hooked on sewing!

As I sit at the window writing this it is pouring down with rain outside, there's just been a flash of lightning and the last thing I can imagine wearing is a flowery summery dress but oh well, there you go, that's British summer's for you. I'm just so incredibly pleased with myself that I managed to get my dress refashioned in time for the wedding on Saturday!

The first thing I did was change the hem from a full-on scalloped hem to a lovely straight hem.  I then laid it over the back off a chair and couldn't stop looking at it - that's how pleased I was with my handy-work.  I was very good the first few nights sewing and listened to music - I'm totally addicted to Alela Diane's new album at the moment, especially after seeing her live last month.  However last night Oliver was out which gave me a rare chance to watch some Five USA AKA Jerry Bruckheimer's TV Channel - yes I watched an episode of Numbers then 2 hours of CSI, I'm not ashamed of that, ok maybe just a little bit ashamed, but it's an addiction I can't seem to shake!

You can see all the before photos - the hem, the broken shirring, the ribbon straps - on my Flickr and in the great Flickr group set up for Make&Mend 2011. It took me one night to do the hem, another night to do the straps and last night to do the shirring.  I imagine all these things will get quicker as I learn more, I mean at the moment I still have to check my sewing machine manual every time I have to fill up the bobbin or change the stitch length!

The dress - BEFORE

You can see in the before photo how shapeless it was with all the broken elastic on the shirring, and I was just a bit bored by the scalloped hem and the straps as I've had this dress for years.   So all the time was worth it as I now feel I have a new dress and all it cost me was the price of some white thread and elastic thread.  I think I can safely say I am now officially hooked on sewing!

The Dress - AFTER!

The Timotei dress

I was planning on getting started on this tonight but then I discovered Make & Mend 2011 and have spent so long looking at this that I haven't started yet - oops, not the most auspicious start!

So, here's what I'm planning to start, tomorrow night! I love this dress, I got it years ago at Spitalfields Market in London. This summer I thought it was looking a bit odd, on a closer look I realised all the elastic stitching has stretched making it sit at the wrong place on the waist and longer that it should. The one thing I always wanted to change was the scalloped hem so here's the perfect opportunity! I'm also going to use the fabric I cut off the hem to make proper straps as I'm a bit fed up with the ribbons. What about redoing the broken elastic on the smocking? Would that be really difficult? Anyone know any good online tutorials on this subject?

I'm hoping to have this dress done in time for a wedding a week on Saturday - wish me luck?!

The scalloped hem I would like to make straight

The ribbon straps I'd like to replace

Broken elastic on the smocking

My first group sewing project!

I'm a little bit nervous.. ok I'll admit it I'm hugely nervous, what on earth have I done signing myself up for a sewing project when I'm such a complete novice! However I just couldn't resist the New Vintage Lady's Make and Mend 2011.

I have lots of fabric that I have inherited from my mum.  I remember there always being a big pile of gorgeous fabrics in the linen cupboard that were always going to be something - however my mum was an artist - textile and embroidery - and that always took precedence over making clothes.  When my mum passed away I just couldn't bear to throw it out, so along it all came with the sewing machine and threads.  It's only now, two and a half years later, that I'm starting to learn how to use this much-loved machine!  So I thought this would be the perfect project to start with -

• use fabric you already have for a new project - I have a few ideas for this, one with a vintage liberty print, another with a small piece of mustard coloured cashmere
• repair/mend 5 things from 'fix' pile - I've been doing lots of this already but still have plenty left!
• repurpose at least 1 piece of fabric - I'm not sure if this counts but I have a lovely green/yellow/white flower print dress on which the elastic on the smocking has all stretched. It's not too long, sits funny and it only has ribbons for straps.  I'd like to take it up & re-hem it, use the material I've cut off the bottom to make proper straps, and (if this isn't ridiculously out of my depth, then redo some of the broken and stretched elastic).  Is this a re-purpose?

I've now signed up and joined the Flickr group - anyone else want to join in?!

good intentions

Hello!  I've not been a very good sewer recently but it's all for a good reason - since coming back from Italy we've been away again - this time a lovely long weekend back in Scotland.  I went home on Thursday for my Granny's 87th Birthday and we had a lovely party at my Dad's house - 12 of us in total, covering 4 generations!  before heading out to my Gran's I popped up to see a friend Lisa who runs an amazing coffee shop 'C, C & T' in Glasgow - she roasts all the coffee on site, they hand-make chocolates on site, they have the best Moroccan Mint Tea leaves ever - if you're in Glasgow you have to stop by for a visit!  Then a night in Bridge of Allan staying with a good friend (where the sun shined all day, it was unbelievably hot!), followed by Saturday night at the Lake of Menteith Hotel.  This last night was a real luxury treat courtesy of two of my best pals who got us it as a wedding present - thanks Lisa and Kath!  All in all a wonderful long weekend away.  Now I'm back to the reality of work, and hopefully, plenty of time to get on with some sewing!

I was going to get started on the Sorbetto top (a free download from Grosgrain last month).  However after the problems with the sheerness of the yellow stripey top I decided to buy a white fabric to underline it - except I'm not going to properly line it, I'm just going to cut 2 layers, the print and the whit fabric and sew them together - will it work?! I'll let you know how it goes!  I got a white muslin in John Lewis, and then popped into Liberty to get some bias binding (the pattern says you can make your own but I thought I should have back up, just in case).

Of course a quick visit to Liberty rarely turns out like that and I came away with some gorgeous sale fabric.  It's called Durie B and it's by the children's illustrator Brian Wildsmith - whose illustrated version of 'Child's Garden of Verses' I used to love (alas I think it was culled in one of my many attempts to reduce a lifetime of books to a reasonable/moveable number).  I loved the colours of this fabric, the mixture of different pinks, red, and the very mustardy, yellow colour.  Plus the dark background means it'll go great with tights in the winter - I've still got to get over my fear of dark tights with light coloured fabric as I've seen it on lots of girls and it looks great.  It's one of those irrational decisions made early on, like my decision that black and brown or black and blue don't go - once again I've seen other people doing it and know it can work, but am too stubborn - old habits die hard!  I thought it would make a lovely winter dress - and going by my current standards of sewing productivity I think that's being a bit more realistic than starting on more summer clothes.

My new fabric beside another treat to myself, some Sweet Williams

First sewing projects

My very first sewing project was born out of necessity - a draft excluder.  However it took me so long to make it that by the time I'd finished it wasn't really so necessary anymore - however it'll come in handy next Autumn/Winter!  I got the instructions from the Guardian website here and after a few hiccups - totally my own fault - I got it finished as you can see below.  The main problem was I made it far too wide so it took way more rice to fill it than I had thought - I kept running out then taking about another week to remember to buy more as no way was I using our Tilda Basmati for a draft excluder!

I thought for my next project I would choose something else quite straightforward - a cushion.  To be honest I can't remember where I got the measurements from for this but I added an extra inch or so onto the width of the cushion to give myself room to sew.  As it had been a while since I made the draft excluder I had to look at my Bernina instruction book again to remind myself how to thread up the machine and how to put thread on to the bobbin as I hadn't done it since I was a young teenager!  I just used a straight stitch to do the sewing and sewed up three sides of the cushion.  I know it would have been better to include a zip or buttons on the fourth side but I just wanted to make it easy so I just stitched it up by hand once I'd put the cushion pad inside.  The front piece of fabric was a lovely design my mum had in the house for years. She had this magical plastic container in the hall cupboard that was filled with old pieces of clothes she couldn't throw out because of the fabric pattern, a beautiful big piece of Liberty fabric (which I still have, but am waiting till I improve my sewing skills before I use!), and a Chinese quilted waistcoat which I'm hoping against hope I have stored in my Dad's garage and not thrown out (I'll find out the next time I'm up in Glasgow!).   I don't know where she picked this piece up, it looks like a circus performer on a horse, I really wish I'd asked her the story behind it, where she got it, what it inspired in her art work, why she kept it all that time without using it.

I had a bit of a problem as it wasn't quite big enough for the front piece of the cushion so I had to add on a piece of gingham at the top - I think I did quite well in terms of neatness, for a first attempt!  I did the back of the cushion in the pink gingham as well.  I really enjoyed this project - I know it was easy but it was a good way to start getting into using the sewing machine.